Severely traumatized victims of abuse (with PTSD and CPTSD) often become avoidant. But they also display psychopathic and narcissistic traits and behaviors. These are reactive and transient: they vanish without a trace once the victims are nurtured back to health in a holding and loving environment and go full-fledged no contact with their abuser

The psychopathic and narcissistic overlays (these acquired responsive learned traits and behaviors) do not amount to personality styles and disorders. They just serve to counter the abuse or contain it and restore eroded self-efficacy and a sense of agency in the traumatic space. In this sense, they are actually healthy and indicative of resilience.

The victim becomes self-centred, dysempathic, defiant, goal-oriented, reckless, lying, or aggressive just in order to survive in the pathological environment and the multifarious assaults on her identity and individuality.

Theodore Millon wrote this in his seminal "Personality Disorders in Modern Life": "Many readers will be surprised that some of their best qualities express characteristics associated with the antisocial personality ... a capacity for self-sufficiency, ambition, competitiveness, and a constructive pursuit of individuality and self-determination"

Scholars like Oldham, Morris, Maccoby, and Dutton uphold this view that a modicum of psychopathy is actually healthy and a prerequisite for survival and success in certain situations, environments, and professions.

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